Prickle is one of the main characters from Art Clokey's well-known claymation Gumby. He first featured in the original series of the show and went on to play more prominent parts in later series in the 1980s. Prickle is a yellow dragon (often thought of as a dinosaur, but in the episode The Search he is told by Gumby "Since you are relatives you go and distract the dragon..").

The first prickle protein was identified in Drosophila as a planar cell polarity protein. Vertebrate prickle-1 was first found as a rat protein that binds to a transcription factor, neuron-restrictive silencer factor (NRSF). It was then recognized that other vertebrates including mice and humans have two genes that are related to Drosophila prickleM.